“What I want to know,” I said, “is since you were clever enough to learn about moral injury, are you smart enough to fix it?”
Hayes palmed his bald crown. He picked up his clipboard again, an inch-thick stack of papers weighted with my story. “That, unfortunately, is the bad news. This is all so new that we don’t really know yet how to treat it. But I will say that a couple of things look promising. Group therapy. And also doing some kind of service. Volunteering at a shelter, or helping disadvantaged kids. Any number of things.”
I thought of the breakfast I took to the homeless every Saturday morning. The hours I volunteered in the women’s shelter. The determination with which I cared for my partner and looked after my grandmother. The search I’d started for Malik.
But against the debts I owed, it was like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.
“Atonement,” I said, dully. “That’s what you mean.”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s a part of a process that seems to help. And it’s a long process, Sydney. There’s no overnight cure.”
“You’re saying I really did do something wrong.”
“No, not at all. But it doesn’t matter what I think. As a chaplain, I could tell you that you’re absolved of all guilt. Or you could go to a priest and confess your supposed sins and be forgiven. But it doesn’t matter what others say. It only matters what you believe. The decision has to start inside of you. Your most important step is self-forgiveness.”
“You have no idea what I’ve done.”
“I know that nothing in war is clean. I know that we do things in the cauldron of battle that we would never do at home. And I know that most of us are too hard on ourselves.” Again, he touched the scar beneath his eye. “Even a marathon requires a first step. Forgiveness could be yours.”
I shrugged, as if what he had to say was of no great consequence. But I was remembering what my grams had said to me. That sometimes your best self was your worst self. That sometimes you couldn’t separate the two. My lieutenant had told me that Marines were often called upon to do the unconscionable, and that it was all right, because ultimately the ends justified the means.
But damn. The day to day of living within those means . . .
Hayes leaned in, his hands on his knees. “None of your fellow Marines would say you’ve done anything wrong.” He went on. “Neither would your family. But that’s part of the problem. Their understanding or forgiveness means nothing to you, because you’ve convinced yourself that if they knew the real story, if they knew everything you’ve done, they would agree with your own silent judgment. They’d say you aren’t worthy of forgiveness.”
I caressed Clyde’s ears and said nothing.
“In war,” Hayes said, “we do all these things we find terrible and then we come home and people tell us we’re heroes. So we wake up in the middle of the night and try to make those two things line up. But we can’t. We don’t know if we’re sinners or heroes. We try to reconcile who we thought we were with the things we did. And when we can’t, we think we’re unworthy of forgiveness. But forgiving ourselves doesn’t mean whitewashing our past. It just means we’ve decided to allow ourselves to move forward. To live without the guilt and the anger and the nightmares. To reengage with society. To let the past be nothing more than that—the past.”
An alarm on Hayes’s watch beeped.
“Ignore that,” he said.
But I stood, trying to stay solid when I felt as untethered as a balloon. Clyde rose and shook himself.
“No, it’s time,” I said. “And I need to go anyway.”
Hayes looked disappointed, like a man who’d almost managed to land a fish. But he stood and held out his hands, palms up in surrender. “Just think about what I’ve said. We’ll talk more next time. I’m starting group sessions next week. Why don’t you come?”
“Maybe.” I forced a smile. “And thank you for what you’ve said. I’ll think about it.”
“That’s a start.” He handed me his business card. “And if you want to talk between now and our next meeting, just person-to-person over a beer or something, give me a call. Anytime.”
Downstairs, in the hospital bathroom, I locked myself and Clyde in the handicap stall. I squeezed my hands together until my knuckles and fingernails turned white and I stared down into the toilet. With a gut-twisting wrench, I leaned over and vomited. I stayed bent over for a while, the stench of my own vomit sharp in my nostrils. Then I wiped my mouth with toilet paper and flushed everything away.
“Let me find Lucy,” I said, unsure if I was trying to strike a deal with God or the devil. “Let me find her and then I’ll forgive myself.”
When I walked out of the stall, the Six stood lined up by the sinks. Six dead men with their pale, tattooed skin, their shaven heads, the knife-edge glint in their watching eyes. They moved aside as I crossed to one of the sinks, then crowded close behind while I washed my hands.
“You deserved to die,” I whispered. “All of you.”
They watched me, unblinking, in the mirror. Then, one by one, they grinned and nodded, their bloody faces lean and satisfied, their dark, eager looks those of wolves who’ve run their prey to ground.
I glared at them.
“Fuck guilt,” I said. “I’d do it again.”
CHAPTER 14
If I stop having nightmares, if I stop living in the past, how will I speak for those we left behind?
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Outside the VA building, the evening air was violet and balmy. The streetlamps cast warm puddles of light on the asphalt. There were only a few people around, and all of them were very much alive. I found a bench set in a small grove of trees and dropped onto it, needing a moment to sort through what Hayes had told me and to regain my equilibrium. Clyde pressed close against me and placed his head in my lap, his eyes locked on mine. I ruffled his ears. Dogs didn’t believe in human guilt, only in love. Being with him was better than confession and a dozen Hail Marys.
To hell with the wisdom of war. What about the wisdom of dogs?
I reached into the side pocket on my pants and pulled out a wedge of dog sausage. Clyde came to his feet, his rear wiggling with excitement.
“Who’s the Marine now?” I cooed in the high-pitched voice he loved. “Who’s mama’s big boy?”
Now his entire body quivered. I tossed the sausage high into the air. Clyde launched himself skyward, jaws wide. He snapped the sausage out of the air and landed nimbly, ready for more.
I tossed a few more treats for him, then dropped to my knees and gently pulled him with me to the relatively dry ground beneath the trees. I scratched his belly around his K9 vest until we both felt better.
“We’ve got one more thing we have to do before we go home,” I told him.
His ears perked.
“It’s a Marine thing.”